Legal practice in Malaysia has been a labour intensive one, with a large portion of the legal practice only utilising basic technology to achieve day-to-day tasks.
Overhead costs in law firms are heavily tied to the hiring and training of legal professionals and supporting staff in order to cope with document generation and management, legal processes and timelines, client management, as well as billing and collections amongst others.
The productivity and efficacy of work has not successfully justified the amount of cost invested into these overheads.
The development and adoption of law tech allows legal firms to lower administrative costs of running a practice and also make lawyer's time more efficient.
Legal justice culminates from the collaborative efforts of the three main components of the legal industry, i.e. the legal practice, the stakeholder industries, and the judiciary. In between these three main components lies the communication gap that allows for better access to justice.
The development of legal technology to fill these communication gap can improve legal justice processes for both the people who need critical help and those who aim to provide those help in a more time and cost efficient manner.
Working on collaborative platforms enables law firms to communicate more effectively with internal and external stakeholders to ensure efficacious outcome from the moment clients’ instructions are received, to the close of a matter.
The Malaysian legal practice has been using a combination of unconnected systems and platforms to communicate with internal and external stakeholders as well as to store and manage data and information.
This culminated in a tattered chain of communication of data and information from on end to another, with all parties involved in a transaction risking their money, time and patience to erroneous and/or delayed information.
This communication disconnect can be resolved by the development of a more holistic and cost effective tech platform that serves as a connecting web between all stakeholders in the legal industry.
Technology has been assimilated into the legal work incrementally, but the local legal industry has not experienced disruption the same way that other industries and professions have.
It is possible that the inevitable characteristics of the profession to uphold, endure, and maintain stable rule of law has made lawyers notoriously resistant to change.
This LawTech Hackathon is an enabling platform that allows professionals, students and innovators from the legal industry to work with tech designers, developers and enthusiasts to address problems faced by the Malaysian industry through collaborative efforts. Enhanced knowledge sharing between the legal industry and the tech industry is essential in cultivating an innovative culture to drive the Malaysian legal industry towards progress.